Archive for August, 2010

Good evening! I am sorry that this post is coming to you so late in the evening, but things are in full swing around here! As usual I have plenty irons in the fire and so beefonabudget has filled every available space in my day! I am so excited about today’s post! It has been requested that I come up with a recipe that guys (girls too) could toss in to their lunches to replace the everyday sandwich and still have the filling effect. I was so excited when my new roommate, Amanda, introduced me to a breakfast biscuit that inspired these tasty sandwich replacements. Get excited about this fun and simple boxed lunch ready biscuit that will take the monotony out of taking a sack lunch each day!

These are great and so fun! In a bowl combine the thawed ground beef and the seasonings. Just dash the spices to your liking, as usual, if you want extra spice add some chili powder or cayenne pepper. Brown the ground beef in a skillet. Once the ground beef is ready let it cool and mix the biscuit dough. Add the cup of cheese to the biscuit dough and mix with a spoon. Next add the ground beef and a dash of water to help blend the ingredients together. Drop the dough in tablespoon amounts onto an ungreased cookie sheet. (If you feed real hungry boys, bigger biscuits are better!) Bake at 450 degrees for 10-12 minutes or until golden brown. Serve warm. Now for the lunch part… place cooled biscuits in individual quart size zip lock freezer bags, for quick grabbing convenience. Place all these bags in a gallon size zip lock and stick them in the freezer. Stick them in their lunches frozen. They will thaw enough for them to eat them cold by lunch time or pop them in the microwave for 30 sec or so! A great substitute for a sandwich that will help to break the monotony of their everyday sack lunches.

Good evening everyone! It is a Friday night in Stillwater and the end of my first week of school. My week was full of meetings and more meetings. But I guess senior years are like that lol.

The funnest part so far is having my own functioning kitchen! Y’all it’s so nice!! I still miss my kitchen at the ranch but this is the next best thing. Last night I was craving a grilled cheese sandwich but needed to cook some ground beef that was in the frig. So I decided to create a fun something different sandwich 🙂

I like the way the grilled cheese tastes in an iron skillet because it really toasts the bread differently then a non-stick skillet but use what ever you like. Melt a small slice of butter and add one slice of bread. Heap your toppings and allow to slowly melt on medium/low heat. Add your second piece of toast and with care and a large degree of coordination turn over your sandwich and add another sliver of butter. I say this with all honesty I have trouble with this!

Toast the other side, slice diagonally or down the middle if you like and serve with my favorite sides of purple grapes and a tall glass of milk. 🙂 trust me this is really tasty and much more filling than just a regular grilled cheese. Try it and tell me if you agree!

It is now Wednesday night of the first week of school and it seems like another one of those weeks where I lay my head down Sunday night and wake up to Thursday! TIME flies around here! The previous week was busy as well and so I am so sorry our posts haven’t been as consistent as usual. That previous statement was an excuse and you know what they say about those so I will just promise to do better next time! I get asked often to start posting some meals that could easily be fixed for just one person…this is one of those! The way this recipe came about is rather unique…see last week I was keeping a little boy that I babysit rather often. He was upstairs playing and I was folding the family’s laundry, vacuuming etc. while watching Food Network! I am a big Food Network fan so it was only fitting, anyway, there was a man who fire roasted an orange bell pepper in the oven! I was amazed and could only dream of how delicious it would taste. That is what was on my brain all afternoon and so when I realized that I needed to write a post I was determined to include an oven roasted orange bell pepper and I did! So head for your kitchen allow yourself 15 minutes to prepare this delicious wrap and then enjoy a Summer Sunset!

Turn on the broiler in your oven. Slice the bell pepper in half long ways. Coat with a lite drizzle of your favorite oil and place under the broiler until the skin turns black but be sure to remove before the underside burns to! Place your tortilla on a cutting board or smooth surface and spread the cream chease on it. Next place a few slices of the oven-fire roasted bell pepper, the spinach and then the roast beef on top of that. Sprinkle with salt and pepper. Next starting at one end of the tortilla roll the contents up like an enchilada. Slice in half at an angle and enjoy! I had this with a small spinach and blue cheese salad which was delicious but you could eat it alone or with chips and salsa. It would also be great to take to work for lunch. To store wrap tightly in seran wrap after it has been enchilada rolled. This will keep the tortilla from drying out!

I hope you have enjoyed this quick and tasty summer supper! Gather up those you love and spend the last few weeks of summer taking each moment for all that it is worth, cause those memories never go away!

It is Monday August 23rd and my first day of my last year of college. I sometimes wish everyday was as easy as the first day, but real life is just not that easy.

I know with everyone back to school, Beef on the Go is needed even more until the schedules are ironed out and life gets back to a semblance of normal. I really don’t know the last time my life was ever normal – so maybe that’s just a lie that circulates to keep people looking ahead instead of behind. However, regardless of that fact we still gotta eat, no matter how busy we are.

And one of the tastiest burgers I have had in a while came not from a specialty burger place – but McDonalds. I had heard great things about the McDonalds Angus burger, but didn’t know how scrumptious they were until I ordered one.

They taste so fresh, with romaine lettuce instead of the boring iceberg, ripe tomatoes, purple onions, tangy pickles with seasoned beef patty with melted cheese and a special mayo on a toasted sesame bun. At $6.99 for the combo meal, this is a great buy on a great burger.

So the next time you are running to-and-fro and realize you are hear you stomach growling go try out this great burger.

Good Monday morning to y’all! I hope that you are being blessed wherever you are today. I am spending a few days with Amy’s siblings while she is helping her parents in Florida. Not only am I enjoying the time that I get to spend with them (like my own sister, I don’t get to see them near enough), being on the ranch is a relief even if I have only been in town for two weeks now, it has been plenty enough time to be missing ranch country. It’s hard to beat lookin out the kitchen window at pasture, whether it’s wild oats at home or sage here! Amy’s sisters (Lydia, 13 & Amanda, 11) and I fixed these tacos for supper last night and they hit the spot so I thought I would share them with y’all!

In a large skillet begin to brown the ground beef. During this time, fry the taco shells in canola oil. Fry one side, flip it over, fold in half (fried side in) and fry the outsides. Do this to all the tacos shells you will need, they are small so I usually plan on at least two per person, three if you are feeding boys. Season the meat with the listed spices, to your taste. I prefer spicy so I use extra cayenne pepper. Brown the meat until it is cooked through. Dice the onions and tomatoes and shred the lettuce. Then simply assemble! So easy so quick and very tasty! We had them with Pico De Gallo and Chips, but you could serve them with a salad if you want to!

I also wanted to share a quick cookie recipe with y’all. It is super simple, very affordable and all of the ingredients are common to have lying around. They are easy peanut butter cookies, I found the recipe in a cookbook that I have called Five Ingredients or Less, by Gooseberry Patch. So thank you Gooseberry Patch for sharing with BeefonaBudget.com!

EASY Peanut Butter Cookies1 C Peanut Butter1 C Sugar1 Egg

Mix these three ingredients then roll the dough into a small ball and flatten with a fork making criss cross patterns on the top. Bake for 10 min at 350. Then let them cool on a wire cooling rack.

These cookies are easy (Wheat Free) and I promise they will get gobbled up faster than you can bake them. The girls and I also found they are great with coffee in the morning! ENJOY!

It is August 13th and my summer is quickly coming to an end. This summer’s been unlike anything I have ever experienced before. I have learned a lot about myself, what I can and can’t do – and I have drawn even closer to my family. Learned that sometimes, the simplest things mean the most, and are the things you remember the clearest.

Like one of my last conversation with my PawPaw Griffin, he was telling me how proud of me he was, and this website. Mom had sent them copies of some of the recipes and the about pages Anna-Lisa and I had written. This was the end of March – I was in Oklahoma, in school and eight hours away from him. I wanted to hug him then, little did I know that the next times I hugged him, he would be confined to a hospital bed.

My PawPaw was proud of me, that I could tell the family story, the story of ranch country, of growing up knowing how to wear pearls and blue jeans. He was proud that his daughter and her three daughters knew how to make a hand on the ranch, yet still be ladies. When he was telling me this, he started crying saying he was so proud of the choices I had made, the spirit I had, and the dreams I was chasing.

The week after he told me this, he went to the doctor and was diagnosed with liver cancer. Today marks the twelfth day I have lived without my PawPaw. He went to be with Jesus on August 1, 2010. He was buried the next day on the ranch, in a pine box, with services led by this children and grandchildren under a tent, in the middle of a pasture. After my daddy prayed, we listened to one of his favorite songs, “I’d like to be Texas when the Roundup in the Spring” along with hymns and bible verses. Six of his grandsons lowered the casket with ropes, and when we walked away I realized how much I had lost, and in these ensuing days since, I keep realizing more and more the loss of him.

I can no longer call him, and tell him about the latest things I am doing. He would not be around to see where Beef on a Budget went, what doors were opened and new ideas I came up with. I would never again hear his voice saying he was proud of me.

My eighty-five year old grandfather, T.L. Griffin II, the man who few really knew, the quiet cattleman from Borden County, Texas had finished his earthly race, and he was finally home. PawPaw was no longer in pain, yet a void for his wife, three children, fifteen grandchildren and three great-grandchildren is now beginning.

The conversation we had in March keeps running through my head every time I think about this website. I want to continue to make him proud, to continue to be a beef advocate. He has left me a legacy that I am proud to live, everyday – a legacy of loving the ranching lifestyle, of raising cattle and feeding the world one beef meal at a time.

I don’t know all the reasons why you read the posts here, but I will tell you one of the many reasons I post, is because of him.

Thank you for reading, and being patient with me as I know this summer I’ve not dedicated enough time to this website, but I had so many other things on my mind. I apologize for missing posts, or writing very short ones. I hope to get my schedule and my brain back to inventing new recipes and sharing with you soon, because it is something I want to do, and need to do.

Thank you for supporting my dreams, and for eating beef – you are making my PawPaw proud just by doing that!

Have a beautiful Friday, enjoy your weekend and call those people that are important to you. You never know how much more time you have with them.

Good Morning! Today is an exciting day! I get to move in to my new house and meet my new roommate! SO FUN! The past two weeks have been a whirlwind of double yellow lines and black top (hence the lack of photos lately), but things are starting to settle a bit, that is until I am back on the road this weekend. I often wonder if things will ever slow down, but then I think about it and realize…NO WAY! My mentor told me last night, “Honey, that is just your pace of life, you have a lot of things going, and it seems that things will never slow down, but someday they will.” We are very similar in the fact that we both burn the candle at both ends and have 40 different irons in the fire, but she is always quick to remind me that busy women get things done! In amongst other things I have been house sitting for about a week and a half, so this post was created in another person’s kitchen which was a fun adventure! These enchiladas are delicious, quick and easy… not to mention they are CHEAP! So… get excited because no matter how busy you are I promise you can find 20 minutes to fix these delicious enchiladas and have supper with your family!

Brown the ground beef in a large cast iron skillet, or any other large skillet. Season the beef with the spices to your liking. If you like them more spicy add more pepper, if you need a lower sodium alternative use less salt etc. I love spicy food so I kicked mine up a notch with additional Cayenne Pepper! Once the beef has browned, drain off the excess fat and add the can of RoTel tomatoes and the corn. At this point the stove can be turned down to medium heat. Rinse and drain the black beans, I hate the slim, so gross! Mix them in as well. In another skillet or griddle spray some non stick spray and heat the corn tortillas so they don’t rip with you fill them. Using a spatula add filling to the middle of the tortilla and the roll and tuck the ends under the enchilada. I do them rather full and four across so you end up with 8 enchilladas in the pan. I have not found an easier way to get the tortillas warm, anyone have any ideas? Once all 8 of the enchiladas are in the pan I pour the green sauce over them and the top them with cheese. At this point they can be baked for 10 minutes or so until the cheese has melted and begins to brown, remember everything else was already warm. Dish out the enchiladas and serve them with your choice of sides, some of my favorites include chips and pico de gallo or a simple green salad. Quick, affordable and delicious!

I hope that this post has been helpful! I found it to be delicious, quick and at only $2.57 per person, I definitely consider it budget friendly! I will leave you with one of my favorite quotes and I hope that it will inspire you as it does me each and every day!

“I have a premonition that soars on eagles wings. It is a dream of your accomplishments of many wonderous things. I do not know beneath which sky or where you’ll challenge fate, I only know it will be high, I only know it will be great!” ~ Mary Kay Ash

Hello Y’all!

Welcome to our corner of the world! Welcome to the inspiration of two ranch girls Amy Brown and Anna-Lisa Giannini and our experiences cooking on a budget with beef while we are going to college and living in town. We want to share with you how easy it is to eat high class, while also eating healthy and enjoying every bite all the while making every dollar count!

We grew up with beef in the freezer, beef always on the table, and made from scratch food for every meal. Life off the ranch has been a challenge in many ways, but one of the hardest adjustments for us was cooking the food we love without breaking the bank.

Buying beef out of the meat case can be a challenge. We are going to share with you some tips we have learned, recipes we have created, and show you how we are able to satisfy homesickness for a while, by just filling our plates.